"Exposed Thoughts"

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"Words are exposed thoughts." Thoughts remain in our head until they are written or spoken. More often than not, they probably need to stay in our head. Once they are exposed, they offer up a blessing or a curse. Which will it be?

My approach to my collages has taken on a different twist. Yesterday, I made a concerted attempt to lay down all my text pages on a primed sheet of 300 lb. HP (painted with black gesso) and deliberately allow more of the black background to show. In that way, the positive (text pages) and negative(black background) spaces were my primary consideration. Next came a the plain rice paper and some stained with umber and titan buff as overlays over the text. At this point I dried the piece thoroughly, did some gestural writing in pencil and then cropped the whole sheet, paying attention to the positive and negative only.

Color was added (the same colors from the last two postings) with the addition of the sliver of orange which is a split complement of green and a direct complement of the blue/green. You can clearly see what a difference just one small bit of the complement makes. Yesterday, the color blocks occupied about 50% of the design space. Today, they occupy about a third of the design space. Going back and forth with varying color percentages and which color will dominate is part of my experimenting this week. To create more subtle interest, I also adhered more text to the piece...both opaque and transparent. And if you like only neutrals, you can stop after adhering all of the text and leave the color off completely. Another idea is to use maps, line drawings, gestural marks, pencil and ink drawings, or painted imagery instead of old book pages. And there you have it...just a few more things to think about.